4. Dirty Projectors, Swing Lo Magellan

Dave Longstreth’s art-rock band takes a lot of risks — not least of which is being insufferably quirky. Still, every studied gesture of weirdness or abrupt volte-face in these songs ends up taking them someplace thrilling, as when the sailor’s-knot melody of “About to Die” splits the difference between Arnold Schoenberg and Burt Bacharach, or when the band’s creamy harmonies on “Gun Has No Trigger” cling to a rhythm that’s riddled with deliberately preserved human error.